Shepherd's Holiday ~ Hume

Labour in Vain ~ Hume

Shepherd's Holiday ~ Hume Shepherd's Holiday ~ Sharp

Shepherd's Holiday ~ Hume or Labour in Vain ~ Hume is an English Country Dance. It was published by John Playford (website) in 1651 in The English Dancing Master, London. It was interpreted by Colin Hume (website) in 1995 and published in Playford with a Difference. It is a proper 3 Couple Longways dance. There is no progression in this dance. It is a USA dance. The dance lasts 92 bars. It is in the key: B flat. Someone thought this dance was Easy / Intermediate.

Playford writes:

Lead up all a D. back, cross over Lead down, back again, cross over The first man slip before the 2. man while his 1. wo. before the 2. wo. then the last man slip behind the 2. man, while his wo. behind the 2. wo. then all six turn round about to the left hand into their places, the the last cu. do as the first, and the first as the last

Sides, back again, cross over That again Three men and three we. back, joyning hands, meet three men, hands and go round, we. doing the like, men and we. back as before and meet, hands backward and go round as before.

Arms as you sided The 1. man cross into the 2. wo. place, and his wo. into the 2. man's place, &c.

Colin Hume's book says this is a duple minor, the instructions make it clear he means 3 couple longways, and his website makes that correction.

Colin differs from Cecil Sharp in that: he has the cross at the end of A2 be by the left in each part, his slipping sequence in I.B is different, his part III.B uses a different set of cross and requires 3 repetitions of the B tune (as a result most recordings of the tune will not work with this iterpretation).

All of Colin's interpretations contain explanations of why he made the choices he did, these may be found either in his book, or on his website. I encourage you to examine his reasoning.

The tune was published by Playford for the dance. The music was synthesized by Colin Hume's software

The animation plays at 109 counts per minute. Men are drawn as rectangles, women as ellipses. Each couple is drawn in its own color.

The dance contains the following figures: USA, hand turn (allemande), circle, siding, arming (and probably others).

If you find what you believe to be a mistake in this animation, please leave a comment on youtube explaining what you believe to be wrong. If I agree with you I shall do my best to fix it.

If you wish to link to this animation please see my comments on the perils of youtube. You may freely link to this page, of course, and that should have no problems, but use one of my redirects when linking to the youtube video itself:
https://www.upadouble.info/redirect.php?id=ShepherdsHoliday-Hume

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The dance itself is out of copyright, and is in the public domain. The interpretation is copyright © 1995 by Colin Hume. My visualization of this dance is copyright © 2022 by George W. Williams V and is released under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

This website is copyright © 2021,2022,2023,2024 by George W. Williams V
Creative Commons License My work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Most of the dances have more restrictive licensing, see my notes on copyright, the individual dance pages should mention when some rights are waived.